A One Time Plea To Help Out The Print World

With last week's sudden and unfortunately shuttering of T&L Golf, I couldn't help but notice the huge drop in circulation and the likely impact it made on decision-makers who shut it down. Making now a good time to be doing a little begging for our friends in the print world. Yes, this will sound like a PBS pledge drive, but I can speak from the perspective of someone who browsed so many old golf publications and fears a repeat of the late 30s and 40s when there was no more American Golfer or Golf Illustrated to kick around.

I just tossed a T&L renewal form that would have cost $29 for 6 more issues. Now, you might say that's not the greatest value these days but $29 will not even get you a dozen premium golf balls. And just think, for that money you would have gotten this amazing publication arriving in your mailbox filled with lively writing, vital travel tips, beautiful photography and insights into special places you either must see, or may never get to visit due to their remote location.

In a larger historical sense, publications like T&L serve as valuable documenters of golf architecture and important people in the game who may be of great interest to future generations. While I understand it is not your job to prop up a magazine so that future generations have a historical resource, do remember that we live in an information-driven world, and if you job is in anyway tied to your passion for the game, golf magazines provide you with insights that might just bridge some sort of gap between you and your superior. (There, it's all about YOU.! Thankfully, I know most of the people who read this site are not the raging narcissists who gobble such stuff up!).

And yes, most of the golf publications were woefully slow in adopting to the online world and continue to inexplicably ignore digital options (Golfweek fully exempted). They also undermine the value of a subscription by giving away too much content and offering subscribers few online perks like access to PDF's of back issues. I shouldn't complain because this is to the benefit of blogs, thank you very much.

That said, there is still nothing quite like a magazine. You can take it all of these weird places--the beach, the plane, the train, the car wash, the doctor's office, etc...--share it with friends easily and all for a ridiculously low price each month.

So while you may be cutting back on dinners, trips or other expenses, I beg you to think twice before ending your magazine subscriptions. You may not like every piece of writing and you may suffer the occasional paper cut while powering through the instruction drek stuff each month, but I can tell you that golf's major publications have never looked more beautiful and they've never been a better value.

So here's the PBS part. Just in case you aren't a subscriber or were looking for a classy gift...

Subscribe to Golf Magazine for $10.

Subscribe to SI and request Golf Plus and get 28 issues for $24.

Subscribe to Golf Digest for a whopping $12 for 12 issues.

Subscribe to Golf World and get a year's worth of coverage for $32.

Subscribe to Links and get one year for $13.95 or $14 for two years

Subscribe to Golfweek $35 and get a year's worth of coverage.

And this plea is most definitely applied to regional publications or others I've left out. The little guys need even more support than the big guns. Either way, I know you won't regret signing up for one or all of these pillars of the game. I sure don't want to imagine a world without them. Do you?